This timely volume reminds us that the archive concerning the story of our region before
European conquest takes many shapes and forms. The authors offer fascinating insights into
how this archive was made and how we can use it to investigate, understand and reinterpret
the deep past. This is a thoughtful, innovative and rigorous study. We need this kind of
scholarship now more than ever.
— Heather Hughes, Professor of Cultural Heritage Studies and Head, IBCC Digital Archive

Any decolonisation project in southern Africa arguably requires knowledge of the histories
of the region before colonisation. Access to that knowledge hinges on acknowledging,
accessing and narrating archive. Archives of Times Past is all about this essential work.
— Verne Harris, Acting Chief Programmes Officer, Nelson Mandela Foundation

This is a landmark and engaging book that effectively challenges and displaces common and
persistent assumptions about southern African history. More than that, it offers new ways to
think, debate, and understand the deep histories of the past in southern Africa and to imagine
more promising futures.
— Maanda Mulaudzi, Lecturer, Department of Historical Studies, University of Cape Town

Archives of Times Past: Conversations about South Africa’s Deep History explores particular sources of evidence on southern Africa’s time before the colonial era.  It gathers recent ideas about archives and archiving from scholars in southern Africa and elsewhere, focusing on the question: ‘How do we know, or think we know, what happened in the times before European colonialism?’

Historians who specialise in researching early history have learnt to use a wide range of materials from the past as source materials. What are these materials? Where can we find them? Who made them? When? Why? What are the problems with using them? The essays by well-known historians, archaeologists and researchers engage these questions from a range of perspectives and in illuminating ways. Written from personal experience, they capture how these experts encountered their archives of knowledge beyond the textbook.

The book aims to make us think critically about where ideas about the time before the colonial era originate. It encourages us to think about why people in South Africa often refer to this ‘deep history’ when arguing about public affairs in the present.

The essays are written at a time when public discussion about the history of southern Africa before the colonial era is taking place more openly than at any other time in the last hundred years. They will appeal to students, academics, educationists, teachers, archivists, and heritage, museum practitioners and the general public.

Keywords: Oral history; deep history; heritage studies; museology; memory; memorialising; pre-colonial; historiography; archive; archaeological histories; South African History, South African societies, Public culture, Pre-colonial history, 1800s, 19th century, 20th century, Archive, Archaeology, Rock art, Museums, Oral histories, Eastern Cape, Limpopo-Gauteng-Lesotho-KwaZulu-Natal regions, Mapungubwe, Indigenous Knowledge, Traditional culture, Missionaries and Mission education, black intellectuals, apartheid, decolonisation, #FeesMustFall movement, #Fallists, Shaka, Zulu kingdom, Magema Fuze, Tswana history, history curriculum and assessment policy statement, pedagogy, master narrative, developmentalist history

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
Editorial Note
Map

Part I First Thoughts about the Archive
Chapter 1 Exploring the Archive of the Times before Colonialism — Cynthia Kros, John Wright, Mbongiseni Buthelezi and Helen Ludlow
Chapter 2 A Young Woman’s Journey of Discovery — Cynthia Kros and John Wright
Chapter 3 Where Are the Deep Conversations about the Past? — Cynthia Kros and John Wright
Chapter 4 ‘Ask the Old People’; ‘Ask the Professors’ — Cynthia Kros and John Wright

Part II Commentaries and Conversations
Chapter 5 Notes on a Kholwa Writer’s Life: Magema Fuze — Hlonipha Mokoena
Chapter 6 An Archive in an Old Tin Trunk — Rachel King
Chapter 7 Making ‘Tribal Histories’: The Work of Paul-Lenert Breutz — Fred Morton and Jan Boeyens
Chapter 8 Conversations with Sekibakiba Lekgoathi — Sekibakiba Lekgoathi, Cynthia Kros and John Wright
Chapter 9 Unpacking Olden Times — John Wright

Part III Becoming Explorers
Chapter 10 From ‘Nature Study’ to ‘Nature’s Archives’: My Journey into Environmental History — Muchaparara Musemwa
Chapter 11 Nervously Entering the World of Carl Hoffmann and His Interlocutors — Lize Kriel
Chapter 12 Dreams and Destinies: Stepping into the World of Archaeology — Ndukuyakhe Ndlovu
Chapter 13 Life with the James Stuart Archive — John Wright

Part IV Engaging with Archaeology and Rock Art
Chapter 14 Digging Historic Cave: An Archaeological and Historical Quest — Amanda Esterhuysen
Chapter 15 Storm Shelter: Rediscovering an Archive of Rock Art — Geoffrey Blundell
Chapter 16 A Lion’s Life: Tracking the Biography of an Archaeological
Artefact — Justine Wintjes

Part V Conflicting Opinions
Chapter 17 A Neglected Archive – and an Academic Pact — Sifiso Mxolisi Ndlovu
Chapter 18 Mapungubwe Imagined — Himal Ramji
Chapter 19 Mkhize Historians Dispute the Past — Grant McNulty

Part VI Further Thoughts
Chapter 20 Making Journeys into the Archive — Cynthia Kros
Chapter 21 The Archive in Pictures: Visual Essay — Justine Wintjes

Glossary
Contributors
Index

Editors:

Cynthia Kros, historian and heritage specialist, is an Honorary Research Associate of the History Workshop at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, and an Honorary Research Associate of the Archive and Public Culture Research Initiative at the University of Cape Town.

John Wright is Emeritus Professor of History at the University of KwaZulu-Natal and a research associate in the Archive and Public Culture Research Initiative at the University of Cape Town.

Mbongiseni Buthelezi is Executive Director of the Public Affairs Research Institute, Johannesburg, South Africa. He has published widely in the fields of African literature, heritage studies, and governance in South Africa.

Helen Ludlow was head of History at the School of Education, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg until the end of 2016 lecturing in academic history and methodology. Her main research interest has been nineteenth-century Cape colonial history, with a focus on slave emancipation, missions, and teacher identity.

Contributors: Geoffrey Blundell, Jan Boeyens, Amanda Esterhuysen, Rachel King, Lize Kriel, Sekibakiba Peter Lekgoathi, Grant McNulty,
Hlonipha Mokoena, Fred Morton, Muchaparara Musemwa, Ndukuyakhe Ndlovu, Sifiso Mxolisi Ndlovu, Himal Ramji, Justine Wintjes

This timely volume reminds us that the archive concerning the story of our region before
European conquest takes many shapes and forms. The authors offer fascinating insights into
how this archive was made and how we can use it to investigate, understand and reinterpret
the deep past. This is a thoughtful, innovative and rigorous study. We need this kind of
scholarship now more than ever.
— Heather Hughes, Professor of Cultural Heritage Studies and Head, IBCC Digital Archive

Any decolonisation project in southern Africa arguably requires knowledge of the histories
of the region before colonisation. Access to that knowledge hinges on acknowledging,
accessing and narrating archive. Archives of Times Past is all about this essential work.
— Verne Harris, Acting Chief Programmes Officer, Nelson Mandela Foundation

This is a landmark and engaging book that effectively challenges and displaces common and
persistent assumptions about southern African history. More than that, it offers new ways to
think, debate, and understand the deep histories of the past in southern Africa and to imagine
more promising futures.
— Maanda Mulaudzi, Lecturer, Department of Historical Studies, University of Cape Town